We have reached spring semester which, in the Student Affairs/Housing world, means we have entered recruitment season. With this in mind, I started thinking back to when I was first attracted to serving in residence life/student affairs. I realized for most of my undergraduate years, I did not even know student affairs was a career path. During my senior year of college, I spoke with one of my mentors, my Residence Director Shannon Hartsock, about my varying passions and interests and what my next step would be. She suggested I consider earning a degree in Higher Education and pursuing a career in student affairs. How many current professionals have a story similar to mine? We serve in an immensely rewarding field and yet we did not even know this path existed until late into our undergraduate years.
This past fall semester, I spoke with Lindy Wagner, the Assistant Director of Residence Life – University Park at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, about increasing awareness of student affairs as a career path among our undergraduate students. During this conversation, Lindy spoke of how she would like to create a new organization at SIUC she had been a part of at previous institutions that would seek to accomplish this very goal. As we spoke more, I became more and more excited at the opportunity to bring the Future Leaders in Student Affairs (FLSA) to SIUC.
FLSA has two primary goals and is divided into two tracks – exploring and searching. The exploring track focuses on providing interested students information on what a career in student affairs entails. We seek to provide students with tools to examine what they are interested in, what their strengths are, and where they might like to go. We provide each student with a mentor in their areas of interest allowing the student to gain a greater understanding of what the day-to-day operations look like in the lives of professionals in the field. Mentors are also able to help guide students on how to best prepare to serve in similar positions – graduate degree programs, experiences to seek out, assistantships that may be helpful, and other professionals who are able to provide more insight. Any interested individuals are welcome to join this track, although the information presented focuses more on individuals who are not graduating/have not yet reached the point for searching for graduate programs and assistantships for the next fall semester.
The second track, called the searching track, focuses specifically on information beneficial to individuals entering the searching process. We focus on searching for the correct fit in graduate school programs and graduate assistantships, resume writing, interviewing skills, and conference/placement exchange preparation. Students in this track are also paired with a mentor – typically the same mentor from their time in the exploring track. We also seek to have a strong relationship with the faculty members in the College Student Personnel program at SIUC, so students are able to sit in some of the graduate classes to obtain a greater understanding of graduate level classroom conversations, graduate level work, and to build the relationships between the program faculty and the students interested in the field. As with the exploring track, all students are welcome to participate in the searching track, although the focus is more toward students who will be graduating and entering the searching process.
As the organization grows, we hope to provide scholarships to students in the searching track to attend nearby placement exchanges as they search for graduate assistantships and/or for students to attend conferences to gain more professional development experiences. Additionally, we would like for the mentor relationships to develop into undergraduate internships, so students are able to gain practical knowledge and experience in the area of their interest.
Exciting things are going on at SIUC and the Future Leaders in Student Affairs is one program of great interest. We currently have 20 students participating in the organization during its first semester on campus, and are excited to see how the organization grows as future plans come to fruition.
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